


A lone voice in the desert

by Kyriadamorte



Series: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy Ficlet Collections [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, jakku as its own content warning, rey's parents were filthy junk traders, who sold her off for drinking money
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-05
Updated: 2018-09-05
Packaged: 2019-07-07 03:34:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15900057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kyriadamorte/pseuds/Kyriadamorte
Summary: A collection of short Rey-centric fics.  No ships, except what you yourself bring to them.





	1. The first time

The first time she runs out of portions after her parents leave, she goes hungry for three days.  This is not first nor even the longest time she has gone without food.  Her stomach is already trained in denial, has already gone days without food while her parents trade parts for booze and deathsticks.

The first time she ventures out for parts after her parents leave, she slices up her hand on an exposed control panel.  This is not the first time she’s gone scavenging and it’s not even the worst injury she’s sustained.  There’s a scar that runs up the back of her thigh that she got from wriggling out of a storage compartment in the floor of an old Imperial freighter.  She doesn’t remember much, she was only four or five at the time, but she does remember the burning, slicing pain of the warped and jagged metal digging into her tiny thigh while her parents screamed  _“Faster, Rey!  Faster!”_

She’s fairly certain that wasn’t the first time, either.

The first time someone hits Rey after her parents leave is not the first time she’s been hit.  She’s already spent so much of her childhood refining reflexes that help her dodge fists (and instincts that tell her when it’s just best to stand and take it).

Yes, it’s not the first time she’s been hit.  It is, however, the first time Rey hits  _back._


	2. The things Rey knows

These are the things Rey doesn’t know.

She doesn’t know if she had a brother. She thinks maybe she did; she can see him, sometimes, on the edge of memories, playing with her while using his body to try to shield her from two shouting figures. There were dice, she thinks, that he used to play with, but she cannot remember what color they were; it changes every time she tries to look closer. Perhaps there were no dice at all. Perhaps there was no brother. It would not be the first lie she’s told herself.

She doesn’t know her surname. She’s not entirely sure she ever had one.  She used to try different ones - ones that she overheard, ones that she read, ones that she made up.  It got her into trouble once, pretending to be Rey J’qen.  It turns out, Nasat J’qen was more than nice scavenger who would share food and call her Sunshine and show her how to get the really tricky parts.  They had a bounty on their head in seven systems and family members would fetch half as much.  She doesn’t try on other people’s surnames after that (not in front of others, that is - she still whispers them to herself some nights before she goes to sleep).

She doesn’t know how long she’s been on Jakku. It’s somewhere between 4,010 days and 4027 days. There were times she got too sick and couldn’t make the marks and lost track.

She doesn’t know when her birthday is; there were never any celebrations.

These are the things Rey doesn’t know.

~

These are the things Rey knows.

She knows how long she can function well without food.  ‘Functioning well’ here means ‘be able to scavenge and haul parts that are approximately her bodyweight halfway across the desert.’  The answer is five and a half days with her normal ration of water.  When she’s running low on water, though, the answer is…much less.

She knows two hundred and thirty seven stories.  She collects them and hoards them as dearly as portions or rare parts.  She listens to smugglers and scavengers and other persons of questionable quality.  Some of them are ballads - mournful, musical formulas.  Others are little more than enthusiastic anecdotes told by drunkards who can barely keep the names straight.  She treasures them all.

She knows that Unkar Plutt will never give her a fair price, but will never actually let her starve; she’s too useful.  Some days she toys with the idea of testing him when she’s got a few extra portions to spare, just to see how long she can refuse his prices until he gives in, until he thinks she might die.  She never does, though.  He’ll figure out what she’s doing and raise the stakes.  He always raises the stakes.  And he always wins.

(She knows her family is never coming back.)

These are the things Rey knows.


End file.
